February 24. On this date in 1929, Douglas Martin was born in Ontario, Canada. A member of the Universal House of Justice from 1993 to 2005, he was a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada from 1960 to 1985, serving as its general secretary from 1965 to 1985. In 1985, he was appointed Director-general of the Bahá’í International Community's Office of Public Information at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa. He served in that capacity until 1993 when he was elected to the Universal House of Justice, where he served until 2005.
His career is typical for individuals in the Bahá’í hierarchy, whether in an elected office or in an appointed offce from which the higher elected officials invariably come from.
At all levels, including the LSAs, Bahá’í leaders are generally as authoritarian, if not more, than clergy from other religious faiths, which as Dale Husband points out, is one of the Four Ways to Create a Religion of Hypocrites:
- State that religion no longer needs clergy……and replace them with leaders that are as authoritarian as the clergy ever was.
- Claim that men and women should be equal……but then deny women membership in the all-powerful leadership council of the religion.
- Condemn as heretics those who believe in your religion but dare to challenge the claims of your religion’s current leadership, while at the same time claiming to welcome as friends the followers of other religions.
- Claim there is harmony between science and religion, but also claim that anything your leaders say is absolutely true, even if on topics science is expected to address. Any one of these makes a religion not worth following, but what do you do if you find a religion that has all four such contradictions
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